Abstract
Tunnels constructed in gas-bearing strata are affected by the potential leakage of harmful gases, such as methane gas. Based on the basic principles of computational fluid dynamics, a numerical analysis was performed to simulate the ventilation and diffusion of harmful gases in a shield tunnel, and the effect of ventilation airflow speed on the diffusion of harmful gases was evaluated. As the airflow speed increased from 1.8 to 5.4 m/s, the methane emission was diluted, and the methane accumulation was only observed in the area near the methane leakage channels. The influence of increased ventilation airflow velocity was dominant for the ventilation modes with two and four fans. In addition, laboratory tests on methane leakage through segment joints were performed. The results show that the leakage process can be divided into “rapid leakage” and “slight leakage”, depending on the leakage pressure and the state of joint deformation. Based on the numerical and experimental analysis results, a relationship between the safety level and the joint deformation is established, which can be used as guidelines for maintaining utility tunnels.
Article PDF
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Pearson F. How to avoid an explosive situation. Tunnels & Tunnelling International, 1991, 23(9): 27–29
Proctor R J. The San Fernando tunnel explosion, California. Engineering Geology, 2002, 67(1–2): 1–3
Vlasov S N, Makovsky L V, Merkin V E. Accidents in Transportation and Subway Tunnels: Construction to Operation. Moscow: Elex-KM Publishers, 2001
Pearson C F C, Edwards J S, Durucan S. Methane occurrences in the Carsington Aqueduct tunnel project—A case study. In: Proceedings of the Rapid Excavation and Tunneling Conference. Los Angeles: 1989: 11–14
Jaffe W, Lockyer R, Howcroft A. The Abbeystead explosion disaster. Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters, 1997, 10(3): 1–4
Copur H, Cinar M, Okten G, Bilgin N. A case study on the methane explosion in the excavation chamber of an EPB-TBM and lessons learnt including some recent accidents. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2012, 27(1): 159–167
Kang X B, Xu M, Luo S, Xia Q. Study on formation mechanism of gas tunnel in non-coal strata. Natural Hazards, 2013, 66(2): 291–301
Morsali M, Rezaei M. Assessment of H2S emission hazards into tunnels: The Nosoud tunnel case study from Iran. Environmental Earth Sciences, 2017, 76(5): 227
Tang Y Q, Ye W M, Zhang Q H. Marsh gas in soft stratum at the estuary of the Yangtze river and safety measures of construction of the tunnel. Journal of Tongji University (Natural Science), 1996, 24(4): 465–470 (in Chinese)
Tang Y Q, Liu B Y, Zhad S K, Huang Y. Research on influence of high-pressure marsh gas on sandy silt engineering. Journal of Tongji University (Natural Science), 2004, 32: 1316–1319 (in Chinese)
Guo A, Shen L, Zhang J, Qin J, Huang X, Wang Y. Analysis of influence mode of shallow gas on construction of Hangzhou Metro. Journal of Railway Engineering Society, 2010, 27(9): 78–81
Guo A G, Kong L W, Shen L C, Zhang J R, Wang Y, Qin J S, Huang X F. Study of disaster countermeasures of shallow gas in metro construction. Rock and Soil Mechanics, 2013, 34(3): 769–775 (in Chinese)
Du J K. Analysis on the leaking process of toxic gases from chemical accidents and determination of the risky area. China Safety Science Journal, 2002, 12(6): 55–59
Luo Ai M, Wei L J. Numerical method of safety distance for poisonous dense gaseous leakage. China Safety Science Journal, 2005, 15(8): 98–100
Li P, Ding Y F, Weng P F. Study on leakage and dispersion of dangerous materials in highway tunnel. China Safety Science Journal, 2004, 14(10): 5
Wang D D, Mao L, Li J F. On the application of FLUENT to the dispersion of poisonous gases in highway tunnels. Journal of Safety and Environment, 2008, 8(2): 140–143
Parra M T, Villafruela J M, Castro F, Mendez C. Numerical and experimental analysis of different ventilation systems in deep mines. Building and Environment, 2006, 41(2): 87–93
Sasmito A P, Birgersson E, Ly H C, Mujumdar A S. Some approaches to improve ventilation system in underground coal mines environment—A computational fluid dynamic study. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2013, 34: 82–95
Camelli F E, Byrne G, Löhner R. Modeling subway air flow using CFD. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2014, 43: 20–31
Amouzandeh A, Zeiml M, Lackner R. Real-scale CFD simulations of fire in single-and double-track railway tunnels of arched and rectangular shape under different ventilation conditions. Engineering Structures, 2014, 77: 193–206
Wei N, Li L, Wang C Y. Analysis of harmful gases concentration variation in tunneling ventilation. Journal of China Three Gorges University, 2006, 28(4): 324–327
Kang X B, Ding R, Xu M, Zhao S J. Numerical simulation for the ventilation in the construction of high gas tunnel. Journal of Chengdu University of Technology (Science & Technology Edition), 2012, 39(03): 311–316
Kurnia J C, Sasmito A P, Mujumdar A S. CFD simulation of methane dispersion and innovative methane management in underground mining faces. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2014, 38(14): 3467–3484
Fang Y, Fan J, Kenneally B, Mooney M. Air flow behavior and gas dispersion in the recirculation ventilation system of a twin-tunnel construction. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2016, 58: 30–39
Fang Y, Yao Z, Lei S. Air flow and gas dispersion in the forced ventilation of a road tunnel during construction. Underground Space, 2019, 4(2): 168–179
Li C, Zhao Y, Ai D, Wang Q, Peng Z, Li Y. Multi-component LBM-LES model of the air and methane flow in tunnels and its validation. Physica A, 2020, 553: 124279
Wu H N, Huang R Q, Sun W J, Shen S L, Xu Y S, Liu Y B, Du S J. Leaking behavior of shield tunnels under the Huangpu River of Shanghai with induced hazards. Natural Hazards, 2014, 70(2): 1115–1132
Wu J, Liu Z, Yuan S, Cai J, Hu X. Source term estimation of natural gas leakage in utility tunnel by combining CFD and Bayesian inference method. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 2020, 68: 104328
Ren X, Wu C, Zhou P. Gas sealing performance study of rough surface. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2010, 46(16): 176–181
Patir N, Cheng H S. An average flow model for determining effects of three-dimensional roughness on partial hydrodynamic lubrication. Journal of Tribology, 1978, 100(1): 12–17
Acknowledgements
We thank Mr Rui Jin (Tongji University) and Mr Yaji Jiao (Tongji University) for assistance in the research. This study was funded by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M651580) and the Research Project of the Chinese National Major Scientific Instrument and Equipment Development (No. 41827807). The authors gratefully acknowledge this support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
He, J., Zhu, H., Wei, X. et al. Numerical and experimental analyses of methane leakage in shield tunnel. Front. Struct. Civ. Eng. 17, 1011–1020 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11709-023-0956-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11709-023-0956-z